


The World Was Ending

by Amyreadsandstresses



Series: The Child Verse [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Dysfunctional Family, Family Drama, Friendship, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Hurt Sherlock Holmes, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Minor Character Death, Parent Sherlock, Parentlock, Pre-Canon, Sherlock Being Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, Sherlock Holmes Has Friends, Sherlock Holmes is Bad at Feelings, Sherlock Holmes is a Bit Not Good, Sherlock is a Good Parent, Sherlock is a Mess, Sherlock's Past, Single Parent Sherlock, Unilock, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-14 05:28:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28915380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amyreadsandstresses/pseuds/Amyreadsandstresses
Summary: Sherlock’s face did a horrible twist, his throat bobbed and he closed his eyes, letting the tears fall onto the floor. She joined him, sobs rocking both of their bodies as the past months caught up with them. The fear of the world changing, the worry over the future, the pain of losing Sabel, the absolute, overwhelming, crushing panic of not knowing what was going to happen now. Sherlock was a parent, and he wasn’t anywhere near ready for it.Sherlock Holmes is now living with people he can hardly call friends, doing his best to adapt to the mess his life has become. He has a baby, he's dropping out of Cambridge, he is lost. Perhaps the world is ending after all.The second part to "The Child Verse"
Relationships: Original Female Character(s)/Original Male Character(s), Past Sherlock Holmes/Original Female Character(s), Sherlock Holmes & Original Female Character(s)
Series: The Child Verse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2118003
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	The World Was Ending

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to "The thing he had made" so it probably won't make much sense if you haven't read that one yet. Second published part of "The Child Verse" and, unlike the first one, this part has a bit of comfort.  
> If you're reading this, then thank you very much for doing so and feedback is appreciated.  
> Hope you like it :)
> 
> I sadly don't own Sherlock. But I do own Bethany Holmes, Gina, and Jack; as well as the plot.  
> Please don't repost this fic anywhere without my permission and credit.

It had been an exhausting day. After endless weeks of withdrawal, shaking, vomiting and heart wrenching crying Sherlock was finally getting back on his feet. It had killed him for Gina to see him in such a state, she knew, and yet she couldn’t help but be thankful he had agreed to spend those agonizing nights on her sofa while Jack looked after the baby. Sabel would have been pleased. 

He had dropped out a week ago, the school giving him a few days to pack his belongings and leave the student residence. She supposed it made sense, he couldn’t live at a student residence if he was no longer going to school, however, it felt heartless to her. Kicking a man when he was already down.

She’d joined him some days in his hunt for a flat, always coming out empty-handed. Too expensive, too bad a neighborhood, too broken down. At this rate, Sherlock and Beth would be living with them until graduation. Not that Gina opposed too much, but she knew Sherlock would. He needed his place. Somewhere for him. 

Gina reached the fourth floor of her building, needing sleep more than anything. She’d spent the whole week working on her statistics project, now on her own, without Sabel. She was offered the chance to find a new partner, she refused. Sabel had had the core idea of their work, after all, she wasn’t about to hand it to someone else, or worse, stop working it all together. 

She heard it halfway down the hall, Beth was crying. How such a small baby could cry so much, she would never know. Over the past few weeks, they had learned the girl could go on for hours, completely undeterred and absolutely inconsolable. It drove Sherlock mad through the worst of withdrawal. Truthfully, it drove her mad too. The only one able to calm her was Jack, and he was still working at that solitary park bench of his. 

With a long-suffering sigh, Gina entered her flat.

She was met by chaos. Sherlock was standing in the middle of her living room, his black shirt stained with what she guessed to be baby vomit, his curls a gigantic nest of knots atop his head and a wailing red-faced six weeks old in his arms. There were cushions and blankets scattered all over the room, a still open baby bottle on the coffee table, and a broken plate by the kitchen. There was also a smell.

“What the hell happened here?” she asked as she locked the door behind her. 

“Everything” Sherlock growled, somehow still low enough to not scare the baby into louder wails “I had put her to sleep already and was looking at the flat list when she started screaming her lungs out. This child is a menace, Gina. An absolute terror.”

“Why?” 

“Not only did she vomit the whole bottle all over my shirt, she peed on me. Twice!” Sherlock’s eyes were manic as he paced the length of the living room, mechanically rocking the little monster in his arms. He glared down at her as if the child was the Antichrist itself and kept pacing. 

“Oh… wow” 

“Wow? Is that all? Perhaps you should be concerned about the extent of your vocabulary if the best you can come up with is wow. How did you get into Cambridge if your understanding of the English language is as mediocre?” Now he was shaking, excellent, just what she needed. Two mid-tantrum babies. “Though I suppose I entered that damn school as well, certainly with much more ease than you and yet look at me now.” He gestured to the baby in his arms, “idiots the both of us, no wonder you let me stay with you, we must be of similar IQ’s after all. What a disappointing concept.” 

“Are you done?”

He glared at her. If looks could kill…  
Gina looked around her flat again. God, what a bloody mess. All of it. They were nineteen-year-olds, they should be out getting plastered, higher than The Big Ben, wreaking havoc wherever they went; though, truth be told, those nights were what got them here in the first place. 

“Here, I’ll hold her for you, you can take a shower.” Sherlock looked at her for a long moment, searching her face for… something, the way he was prone to do. Seemingly satisfied, he started his way to her, holding Beth farther from his chest. Then his knee hit the edge of the coffee table and the open bottle of milk came tumbling down, spilling all over the floor and ruining her rug.

“Fuck!” he yelled out, stepping away from the white mess near his feet. The baby wailed louder, startled by her father's loud cursing. Oh, bloody hell. 

She sighed, hands resting on her hips, and looked out the small window on the wall. Inexplicably, her eyes burned, her chest constricted and a knot formed in her throat. This was absolutely ridiculous. She shouldn’t be here, coming home from a trying day to a man she could barely call more than an acquaintance and his crying baby, to a ruined rug and a broken plate and the smell of piss. To yet another reminder her best friend was dead. Sabel hadn’t followed her to Cambridge just to die at twenty, she hadn’t chosen to study Biology just so she could die two years later, just so she couldn’t get her degree and leave nothing behind other than a baby and an abandoned best friend; she hadn’t come here for this, and yet here they were. Sabel was dead and Gina was living her life and Sherlock was seconds away from spontaneous combustion. What a load of horse shit.

“Gina…” she looked up. The baby was still wailing, but Sherlock had calmed down from his manic explosion and held himself impossibly still, looking at her, no, studying her with that piercing gaze of his. 

“Sabel would have said something far more colorful than fuck” she didn’t know why she said it, but it was true. It was -as the man standing in front of her would say- inconsequential, and yet it somehow mattered, somehow, it was the most important fact in the world.

“Yes, she was far more creative with insults than me” Sherlock’s voice was rough, lower in his deep baritone than she had ever heard it before. “She was far superior to the average person in many things.”

“Yes, she was.” 

They fell quiet, standing opposite of one another in the dark with only Beths crying between them. She felt a hot tear fall down her cheek. Then another. One more. Then a sniff, one that it took her a full second to realize wasn’t hers. Raising her eyes to look at the slightly younger man Gina was met, not with the acerbic Chemistry student, not with a manic cocaine-dependent manchild, but with an equal. She looked across the living room and saw, perhaps for the first time, Isabel's Sherlock. He hunched over himself, swaying from side to side, looking away as he tensed his jaw and pretended his own eyes weren’t shining too. 

“Sherlock” she didn’t know what she wanted to say to him. He barely knew Isabel, he had been as much a part of the problem as everyone else, she barely even liked him. Somehow that didn’t seem to matter anymore. “Sherlock.”

He turned to her slowly, keeping his eyes on the furniture and the floor for longer than necessary until he took a deep, shaky breath and looked up to meet her eyes. They didn't move, didn’t speak, didn’t breathe; just looked at each other for what felt like forever. The dam broke. Sherlock’s face did a horrible twist, his throat bobbed and he closed his eyes, letting the tears fall onto the floor. She joined him, sobs rocking both of their bodies as the past months caught up with them. The fear of the world changing, the worry over the future, the pain of losing Sabel, the absolute, overwhelming, crushing panic of not knowing what was going to happen now. Sherlock was a parent, and he wasn’t anywhere near ready for it. Gina had lost her family, and she felt more alone than ever. 

So they cried. They cried as hard as they could, keeping the other company in the dark, wallowing in their shared misery; even the baby, who seemed unhappy at her own existence. Two college kids and a baby, their souls ripped apart. And, for the first time in what felt like forever, Gina admitted it. She stopped pretending, she stopped smiling and putting on a brave face, stopped promising Sherlock Holmes that he would make it and she would help him. She gave in, let the crashing waves take over and admitted their world was ending. 

They cried, they sobbed, they heaved and panicked and stood still as statues, the world aflame, their hopes in ashes. Sherlock’s hopes turned to dust. Her family gone. They were swallowed by a big, black hole. 

Hours seemed to pass, their cries turning dull and sluggish. Their hearts numbing. Across from her, Sherlock was once again rocking Bethany, trying to lull her to sleep. The baby refused to do anything other than give out some now half-hearted cries, stubborn as a mule even at her early age. Certainly her parents’ daughter. She opened her mouth to say something, some empty words of reassurance when the door opened behind her to reveal Jack. He stopped at the doorway, taking seconds to review the scene before him much as she had done earlier that night. He smiled. A sad, tired smile; the sweet smile Gina loved. 

“Seems like I missed a lot.”

“Understatement of the century” Sherlock muttered, having moved near the back of the room. 

“Right then,” he clapped his hands together, lightly closing the door with his foot “we’re crying then, that’s fine. It took long enough. But we’re fixing this while we’re at it.”

They stared at him. Sherlock narrowed his eyes in suspicion. Jack limited himself to widen his smile at them both and dropped his bag on the floor before walking towards the other man, arms extended.

“I’ll calm her, you take a shower,” Sherlock looked them both over, looked at his child, at his stained shirt, and finally acqueinceded, handing the baby over and stepping back, but not fully leaving. “Go, clean up. Gina and I will start fixing up around here and you can help out once you’re not covered in baby fluids.”

“Don’t ever say baby fluids again, please.” Gina’s voice was rugged, but her eyes were getting drier. 

Jack sent her a winning smile and walked to their small kitchen with Beth in his arms. Sherlock and her locked eyes again, a silent conversation the kind she had seen him have with Sabel taking place. A raised eyebrow, a butted chin, a shrug. He would shower, she would take care of the broken plate and together they would deal with the rug. Agreement in place, Sherlock walked to the bathroom and closed the door. 

The formerly red rug was heavy, smelly, and, most likely, forever ruined. It was a shame, she had loved that rug.  
Beth was finally asleep in her cot, keeping ownership over the corner of the room. Jack was making coffee in the kitchen, swaying his hips along to the cassette player -he had turned it on early on in their clean-up adventure. It was her mixtape, the one she had made back when she was sixteen and needing a larger world than her small town could provide. She bopped her head along to David Bowie.  
Sherlock was kneeling down next to her, passing a wet brush over the wooden floors. She classed the rug as a lost cause and put it in the bin, grabbed a brush for herself, and helped clean the floor. 

It was quiet, the chords and coffee maker low in the background. The sun was starting to come up. Yet another sleepless night. With Beth around, it wasn’t the first and it surely wouldn’t be the last. Gina held her breath and closed her eyes, stretching her back. The world had been ending hours ago. The universe had been reduced to the dark, empty despair shared in that room. Damn it, Sherlock Holmes had cried. It had been the end, she was sure of it. And yet, with the light coming up out the window, with David Bowie singing along in their living room, with Sherlock Holmes voluntarily helping her clean up with a brush in hand, the world was starting again. Life was starting again. 

Gina opened her eyes, looked at Sherlock Holmes, and smiled. 

We can beat them, for ever and ever  
Oh we can be Heroes, just for one day...

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this far, I hope you enjoyed and want to be part of "The Child Verse"  
> If you do, stick around for future parts of this little AU.
> 
> And yes, the song was Heroes by David Bowie. I'm planning on writing a moment of withdrawal too, this part just wanted to come first for some reason; I might also upload a playlist for this series later, we'll see.


End file.
